With the great fishing out at Buoy 10 so far this summer there has been talk of the Tule Chinook.

Can anyone fill me in on the orgin of the Tule Chinook and what makes these fish so dark and just all about these fish?

Thanks!

Ryan,

Tules are chinook that spawn in the lower river. It is believed that due to their shorter trip they enter the river in a more sexually mature state and thier meat is of less quality when in the river. URB's are an up river spawning fish so they enter the river in a less sexually mature state, thus are better table fare. I don't know what tributary drainages deliniate the boundary of an upriver and lower river fish. However all chinook I've hooked in the Sandy and Clack systems have been nasty skaggy tules.

-Ryan

RPetzold, The only hatchery I know that raises tules is the Spring Creek Hatchery west of Bingen. There probably is more but I never have seen them. The Duck

A fair number of the Tule's that are caught in the lower Columbia are heading up the Chinook River (a mile to the west of the town Chinook) and it's main tributary, the Bear River .

Bobber Down

"Keep your hooks sharp!"

Back in the late 1800s when the runs were first over harvested and the hatcheries were built to sustain the runs they used the Tules strain kings which are from the Kalama River.The eggs from these fish were used for many years to build runs in the water sheds through out Wash. State,these fish returned early to the Kalama watershed but as you know they return in the fall to the rivers you are now fishing which is why you can catch boots out in Elliott Bay.

This is an interesting topic. I've also been curious about the Tule Chinook. I grew up in Leavenworth where I fished the Icicle and Wentachee rivers for Chinook. They travel hundreds of miles and are still bright with excellent meat. I've fished the Carbon the last couple of years and noticed that they are almost all dark.....only a few miles from the salt!!! The few that I thought were bright enough to bring home still had washed out meat very little redness left in it. Is it possible that Carbon river fish are Tules?

Does anyone know if there is any advantages about planting the Tule Chinook in the majority of Puget Sound rivers? It is true about Elliot bay Kings on how dark they are even when they're caught in saltwater. Catch kings outside Elliot and are still brite or just have a charcoal hue to them. Why couldn't they had used eggs from say the Quinault river run?



"DO THE WILD THANG"

A little about hatchery chinook. Tules are from native lower Columbia River tributaries. I don't know if the Kalama was the exclusive source of the original seed stock or not. Kalama is one of the oldest hatcheries in the system, so it's very likely one of the sources, even if not exclusive. Other lower Columbia chinook are usually considered tules, like Cowlitz falls - not the springers - however the NF Lewis are more like URBs due in part to their generally later timing, but they are certainly a lower Columbia fish.

As for Elliot Bay and Puget Sound, the overwhelming majority of Puget Sound hatchery chinook are of Green River fall stock. Again, the Green River hatchery was one of the very first built in Puget Sound. So as other hatcheries were added to the system, WDFW just transferred eggs from the Green to Carbon, Wallace, Samish, Nooksack, wherever.

In the past, Puget Sound eggs were transferred to the Columbia and vice versa. Guess what? Non-local stocks usually are not as productive in the new haunts to which they are not well adapted. Even within Puget Sound, Green River kings have never produced worth beans when raised at the Skagit hatchery. Yet Green River coho - again the donor stock to most other Puget Sound salmon hatcheries - have done quite well. Coho seem to be very adaptable. Another interesting example involved the importation of Rivers Inlet chinook eggs to Puget Sound so we could have more large chinook in the local fishery. Masu, or cherry salmon, from Japan were stocked in Minter Creek, I believe. However, like most of the exotic plants, the Rivers Inlet chinook and cherry salmon weren't productive, and those ideas were dropped.

In this age of ESA listings and more restrictive fish conservation, we're even less likely to see exotic stock introductions. If Skamania summer steelhead were not already in many Puget Sound and coastal rivers, they probably would not be imported now.